Gert Strydom

Focus On Springs - Poem by Gert Strydom

Eventually the mine closed, where people worked for months without a salary, the last of them leave the grounds, and there’s a strong suspicion

that the new black owners took the profit into their own pockets, refining the gold somewhere else outside of the company, causing the company deliberately to break apartand it is as if nobody can stop or want to stop this felony.

With stubble on their faces men stand in the streetsguarding cars in the hot sunand they talk Afrikaans, it’s as if the blood clots in their veinswhile life and all income stops for them,

where some even live in boxes on the street, trying to find shelter in the open space behind a church.